Program
Program description
The Middle East (which, for our purposes, includes North Africa and the Horn of Africa) is both the cradle of various religions, cultures, and traditions of knowledge and a region of encounters and conflicts that reflects present global issues. Each of these issues is complex and has its own deep history. Looking from the point of view of a single academic discipline concerned with the Middle East, you can consider only some aspects of every issue.
To obtain a fuller picture, you have to learn to access methods and knowledge of disciplines other than your own. You first have to learn how these disciplines ask questions, what questions they ask, and how they go about answering these questions. Then you learn how to integrate their questions, methods, and results into your own discipline. Finally, you learn how to ask and answer questions with the help of more than one discipline.
This approach is at the center of the Master's program "Interdisciplinary Studies of the Middle East". The Freie Universität has a unique blend of disciplines studying the Middle East: Arabic Studies, Iranian Studies, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Kurdish Studies, Ottoman Studies, Semitic Studies, and Turcology. These have an emphasis on history and cultural studies, but are embedded in an even richer environment in Berlin and beyond.
To apply to the program you need a first university degree and about 60 credit points in courses relevant to ISME. We explicitly welcome applicants who have acquired prerequisites outside of their first degree or as part of a professional career. The program conveys the necessary toolbox for an interdisciplinary approach and allows students to choose their own focus and compose their individual course of studies.
This choice of focus also extends to your career once you graduate. You can learn about present research on the Middle East and how to contribute your skills to the academic field or take an internship to learn how to apply these skills to the professional field.
Program structure
The master's program is divided into three areas, each composed of several modules which, in turn, comprise two courses – a fourth area being reserved for your master’s thesis:
| Number of semesters in the program |
Core area 50 credit points |
Consolidation area 30 credit points |
Complementary area 15 credit points |
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1st semester 30 credit points |
Module Studying the Middle East (15 credit points) |
Module Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Middle East (15 credit points) |
one of the following modules Reading the Middle East (15 credit points) -or- Reading the Middle East through its languages (15 credit points) |
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2nd semester 30 credit points |
two of the following modules Histories and Societies of the Middle East (15 credit points) -or- Traditions of Texts and Knowledge in the Middle East (15 credit points) -or- Literatures of the Middle East in their Social Dimensions (15 credit points) -or- Languages of the Middle East (15 credit points) |
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3rd semester 30 credit points |
one of the following modules Internship (15 credit points) -or- Research perspectives (15 credit points) -or- Elective modules totalling 15 credit points |
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4th semester 30 credit points |
Module Communicating research in Interdisciplinary Studies (5 credit points) |
Master's thesis (25 credit points) |
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| 120 credit points | |
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Career prospects
As a graduate of our master's program, you are qualified to realize career aspirations that require specialist language and intercultural knowledge of the Middle East.
With its interdisciplinary focus, the program prepares you for a wide range of scholarly activities. It qualifies you to pursue a doctorate, both in the individual disciplines and in areas where they intersect. Freie Universität Berlin is home to internationally oriented, renowned graduate schools such as the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies (LINK) and the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (LINK) as well as the International Max Planck Research School "Knowledge and Its Resources: Historical Reciprocities" (LINK) and the Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies (BerGSAS, LINK). Furthermore, the Dahlem Research School is the center for junior researchers at Freie Universität and provides continuous, systematic and sustainability-oriented support to early career researchers. It develops strategies and measures to assure and improve the quality of graduate education and, on the other hand, offers an extensive qualification program (LINK).
Successful completion of the master’s program also prepares you for employment in the broad field of science and research: in higher education; in university and non-university research institutions; in documentation; in media outlets, journalism, archives, and museums; in international organizations, non-governmental organizations; in working with migrants; in tourism; in adult and continuing education; and in teaching intercultural issues in academic and non-academic settings.
In addition, the skills and abilities acquired in the master’s program open up career paths to professions that involve knowledge transfer, management, as well as representing the social, political, and cultural interests of others, especially for businesses or organizations operating internationally or in certain regions of the world. The international character of the master’s program also increases your chances on the global job market.
Frequently asked questions
No, as part of the Department of History and Cultural Studies, the program focusses on cultural aspects of the Middle East. As a student in this program, you engage with languages and literatures from and scholarship about the Middle East and you learn about and apply interdisciplinary methods suited to the diversity of languages, literatures, societies, religions, and cultures of this region.
No, in the core area you can choose between two modules:
- Reading the Middle East, which discusses key texts, central concepts and fields of researching the Near and Middle East (e.g. Orientalism, world/global literatures, Islam in Europe, postcolonialism, nationalism) in their historical development and from a transregional and cross-disciplinary perspective.
- Reading the Middle East through its Languages, which develops interdisciplinary terms and concepts from the fields of cultural studies and humanities by means of various forms of original language sources (oral and written) from the field of Arabic, Armenian, Byzantine, Kurdish, Ottoman, Persian, Syriac-Aramaic, Turkic, Jewish, Islamic, or Christian culture and literature.
Yes, the complementary area allows you to earn ECTS from an internship of up to 9 weeks.
You are not required to do an internship, but you may choose – in the complementary area of studies – to either do an internship or choose courses from other programs or choose the module research perspectives (all amounting to 15 ECTS). Check out the exemplary study plan above for getting an idea of how to structure your two years of studying ISME.
At the moment, there are no advanced language courses specifically designed for this program. ISME builds on existing language skills and consolidates this proficiency through reading courses.
Within other bachelor's or master's programs, the following languages can be studied either in the target language or in English:
- Arabic
- Kurdish
- pre-modern Persian languages and scripts
At the moment, a semester abroad is not a fixed component of our program, but students are encouraged to study or complete an internship abroad, preferably in their third semester. Please note, however, that students have to organize their stay abroad independently.
Freie Universität's office of the International Student Mobility is an important resource for students interested in studying abroad (LINK).
